


Give Me Love

by Rosenhalt



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Comfort, End of the World, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4624059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosenhalt/pseuds/Rosenhalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the world crashes down around them, Jean and Armin find the time for one last dance in each other's arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Me Love

**Author's Note:**

> Completely and shamelessly based off small-town-ink‘s http://small-town-ink.tumblr.com/post/124879378689/small-town-ink-celestial-sam
> 
> Please go look it up, it's sad and fantastic. Sadtastic. No good for your feels, but beautiful.

Armin’s bare feet slide gently across the hardwood floor, barely heard, already feeling out the tune. Jean can hardly believe it, watching him, a contrast and a mirror to his own self. He moves languidly as he draws nearer to him, but the taller man still notices the hesitation, the slight tension that he also feels. But if it weren’t for it, maybe they’d be rooted in place, neither knowing what to do or willing to do what comes most naturally to them. 

He waits for him to be closer, so they are face to face, his body stuck between reaching out for him and staying still to draw out the moment. There’s a deceptively soft red glow coming from the window and it paints the side of Armin’s face in all the colours of fire, of summer sunsets. It only makes his blue eyes appear brighter, bluer than ever before. Or perhaps it’s the work of the tears building there, catching in his golden lashes, refusing to fall. Whatever the reason, Jean commits the colour to memory, the blue of the sea, the blue of another sky.

Their hands find their way into each other’s as they stand almost transfixed. Fingers entwine in a familiar hold, tender and fragile all the same. With a soft squeeze, Jean raises them carefully to their side as the song well-worn between them starts playing in earnest. It’s a comfort. It drowns out the outside world and leaves them in a realm of their own. Or so Jean wishes. He can’t hear the breathing of the city anymore, but he can still feel its irregular pulse beating through the boards of their apartment. 

_Give me love like her,  
‘Cause lately I’ve been waking up alone,_

The gentle words coax him and Armin together in a tentative embrace, where after a held breath is released, he presses his hand at the small of the blonde’s back and pulls him closer.

He feels like he’s moving as though in a dream. Slow, gentle movements, feet gliding, flaxen and sandy hair brushing and breath bated in fear of breaking the spell. It’s a brittle peace they’ve achieved, despite the tears starting to roll down their faces. Feeling Armin move in time with him, Jean is reminded of all the other times they’ve danced together. He remembers them as children, both getting accustomed to their budding friendship, dancing on his bed to old CDs on his shitty radio. He remembers them at prom, when they’d finally stopped caring what others thought of them and taken a portion of the dancefloor for themselves. Or, rather, when he’d stopped caring. Armin never did. He was like the goddamn sun, moving, then, now, along a course all of his own and casting light on all those he held close. He remembers them in a little forgotten alley in Florence on Spring Break, dancing between leaning buildings to the tune pouring from a nearby apartment’s opened window. He remembers them dancing drunkenly at 2AM in this very apartment after moving in together, celebrating with the cheapest champagne they could find. He remembers them dancing at Eren’s wedding, remembers leaning down to whisper the lyrics playing in his lover’s ear, thinking as he kept his eyes on the happy couple, _Maybe soon._

“Paint splattered teardrops on my shirt—”

He’s hardly aware he’s doing it, hardly aware he’s crying through the words. But soon it becomes too much, and the dancing stops, for the last time. Tears run freely down his cheeks, landing on his shirt almost ironically. 

_Told you I’d let them go,_

But Armin’s there, a beacon, an anchor, keeps him steady. They don’t pretend at dancing anymore, and they just hold. They bridge the gap between them, to be as close as they can until the very end. Armin’s hands cup his face, fingers brushing his nape, pull him closer, cheek to cheek. Their tears blend.

“And that I’ll fight my corner,  
Maybe tonight I’ll call ya,  
After my blood turns into alcohol...”

He sobs them in Armin’s ear, words he wants to sing a thousand times more if only to delay the inevitable. But Armin understands when he stops again, voice too broken to sing anymore. He just wanted to comfort him as the red light outside burns brighter, as the world crashes down on them, but in the end, the blonde is the one who reassures him. He can hardly believe it’s mutual, he’s so scared. 

_No, I just wanna hold you._

He reaches up to hold Armin closer, a hand in his sunshine hair, and Armin returns the embrace tenfold, clinging to him as they kiss. It’s wet from their tears, and desperate, and if it isn’t the most beautiful kiss of his life, at least Jean can take comfort in knowing that the last one is special in its own right.


End file.
